


tell me what you think about when you can't fall asleep at night

by stray_dog_sick



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Deals With Human Emotions, Connor Needs A Hug, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Character Death, a very vague progression of time, except its earlier in the story because i said so, no im not, theres more characters but am i really gonna tag everyone who appears in the first 5 connor chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22076374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stray_dog_sick/pseuds/stray_dog_sick
Summary: Real-adjective-not artificial or imitationConnor was artificial, he supposed; born of wires and plastic, rather than flesh and bone. He was certainly an imitation of a human being. One that androids feared and humans hated. He did not enjoy it.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	tell me what you think about when you can't fall asleep at night

**Author's Note:**

> haha guess what guys it's mitch posting fic past midnight again! no beta we die like men.  
> i might add more to this one day but i wanted to post it and see if people liked it i guess.  
> uhh follow me on twitter @crashingnowave and cry with me over that one shot of gavin and nines holding hands in the detroit: evolution teaser.  
> also if anyone knows any good d:bh discords lemme know because the emo server i'm in is sick of me talking at them about this game.
> 
> title from 'all our bruised bodies and the whole heart shrinks' by la dispute.

_ Why aren’t you sending a real person? _

**real  
** _ adjective  
_ not artificial or imitation

Connor was artificial, he supposed; born of wires and plastic, rather than flesh and bone. He was certainly an imitation of a human being. He did not see how that made him any less capable than a human negotiator, although Caroline Phillips’ opinion was likely biased by the actions of her own android. Stress, Connor found, made humans say things they did not mean.

He debated in the back of his mind, while analysing bodies and guns, whether Captain Allen was just stressed too. He had certainly been unhelpful to Connor, meaning he had to waste more time than he would have liked examining the penthouse. 

He decided, eventually, that Captain Allen just did not like androids.

He activated his negotiation program as he stepped onto the roof and let himself think in probabilities for a while. Saving the DPD officer would anger Daniel, but not enough to cause him to jump, and he was programmed to save human lives where possible. He could only apply a tourniquet, but he did not expect the negotiation to take long.

Androids had much better balance than humans, but Daniel was still worryingly close to the edge of the roof. He stepped closer to the deviant, trying to reassure Daniel - and Emma - that everything would be okay. “You’re not going to die,” he told them both, even as his chance of success kept changing. They were not looking good.

The SWAT team did not hesitate to fire at Daniel as soon as Emma was out of his arms, but he did not shut down immediately. “You lied to me, Connor,” he said. 

**lie  
** _ noun  
_ an intentionally false statement

He supposed it had been a lie, since he knew there was not a 100% chance of Daniel's survival. He did not like lying - it felt wrong, even if it had been the best way to convince Daniel to let Emma go. He felt like he had done something wrong, that there was a way for Daniel to walk away from this alive. He might have done, if he was a human. A person. 

Connor did not enjoy being a liar. 

He did not enjoy not being real. 

'Mission successful', they said. The notification was a glaring red. 

\---

They did not shut Connor down properly, because startup takes a long time, and he needed to be ready for any emergencies. And so he rested, slept, preconstructed.

For 82 days.

He constructed every possible scenario for the negotiation with Daniel, and once he had done that, he used information about him, the family and their house to predict what their life would have been like. They had seemed happy, or at least Emma had. Maybe Daniel took her for walks on the weekends, and helped her with her homework. 

**dream  
** _ noun  
_ a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep

Connor was dreaming, he decided. He dreamt for 82 days about Daniel, and occasionally about his startup and journey to the penthouse, because those were the only things he knew. He dreamt about families, blood, water, lies.

He enjoyed dreaming, even if it could be boring sometimes. In his dreams Daniel lived, the bullet wound in Connor’s shoulder was red rather than blue, and he told the truth every time.

\---

Lieutenant Anderson did not like Connor, and neither did Detective Reed. Perhaps it was a requirement for the Detroit Police Department, hating androids. They called him a lot of words containing ‘ass’, which the dictionary told him was another word for donkey, and searches of slang on the Internet showed that all of these were just fancy ways of calling him stupid and irritating. In short, CyberLife did not perfect his social integration programming.

Eventually they allowed him to interrogate Ortiz’ android - after he had told them three times that negotiation was his original function, and that interrogations were just negotiations for information - and he knew that he could not lie about what would happen to the android. ‘Disassemble’ sounded less harsh than ‘destroy’, and he was fairly certain the process would not be painful, but it did not calm the android down.

Connor could have ended it quickly and probed the android’s memory, but that would cause a lot of stress, and the android self-destructing was not the best outcome. If it lived, Connor could learn about more than just Ortiz’ death. He could learn about deviancy, the things he found in the bathroom. During the drive back to the station, he thought about rA9. He could not think about anything else.

The android did not want to die, and Connor assumed that meant he did not want to self destruct, because:

**die  
** _ verb  
_ stop living

Androids were not alive. By scientific standards, they were not living creatures, because they could not reproduce or grow. So they could not die. 

The android told Connor about how he was damaged, ‘mission successful’ hovering out the corner of his eye, and he was pleased to see it was blue this time. Connor asked about the statuette and rA9. The red crept in when he insisted, as if rA9 was something that he was not allowed to know. He was not satisfied with the answers, and he made his own personal mission to find out more information. 

Even Officer Miller was not gentle with the android, and Connor had to intervene. Part of him knew that the android would not cause any problems as long as it was calm, and for once Lieutenant Anderson listened to him (because he got a confession, and therefore was not  _ stupid  _ or  _ irritating _ , he decided). Detective Reed pointed a gun at him, but that was fine. You win some, you lose some.

The android whispered to Connor as it left.

_ The truth is inside _ .

The dictionary feature did not help him figure out what that meant.

\---

That sentence was the main focus of his pre-constructions, in his brief rest period before Lieutenant Anderson’s shift was due to start. He preferred to tell the truth, he decided. It had ended well for him. So whatever the android’s truth was, Connor was sure he would like that too.

He had overheard somewhere that androids were not meant to ‘want’ or ‘like’ things, but Connor disagreed with that. Maybe it was just because he was different to other androids. Designed to have theories and opinions, and able to work without human instruction if needed. He was not just a household robot that completed tasks without question.

He had more questions than answers, and he wished he did not need to rest, so that he could answer them faster. If he was awake he would certainly be running through idle animations, flicking his coin back and forth. 

**curious  
** _ adjective  
_ eager to know or learn something

Connor was curious. Connor wished he could actually sleep, so that he did not have to ask himself the same questions for eight hours.

What was rA9? What truth was inside?

Maybe Amanda would know.

\---

Amanda showed no signs of knowing, so instead he spoke to Ortiz’ android again in the morning, while he waited for Lieutenant Anderson. He would have plenty of time to learn about his new partner, but the android would be sent back to CyberLife soon. It took priority.

The android knew its fate, and Connor was glad that he had not lied. He did not want this android to be angry with him too. “I’m sorry. It’s not what I wanted, but there’s nothing I can do,” he said. He asked his questions again, even though he did not expect the android to answer. And then he watched it self-destruct. Because androids cannot die.

In the car ride to Ravendale, he tried to pre-construct scenarios where the android answered him, or even where the android did not die. He came up with zero.

He questioned an android with an open facial wound, the android too old to self-repair itself. He knew the android was lying, but he could not tell why. Was it afraid of Connor? Lying was a crime, whereas telling the truth meant it could walk free. It was illogical. 

He managed to find the AX400 either way, and chased it towards the train station. It climbed over a chain link fence, and the ease with which the child followed confirmed Connor’s suspicions - the child was an android too. Todd Williams had not mentioned that. He looked at the child, the AX400, and saw nothing but fear. They reminded him of Daniel and Emma. A family.

**family  
** _ noun  
_ a group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit

There were small amendments telling him that some families only had one parent, and that children could be adopted. So the AX400 and its child companion, they were a family. Connor knew that family was very important to humans, so it made sense that deviants valued it too.

Connor knew he did not have a family. He was created in a workshop from wires and plastic, and he did not have any childcare programming. The closest he had was Amanda, but she was more like his boss than his mother.

It was family that he was thinking about when Lieutenant Anderson caught up to him. The AX400 and its child were already on the highway by the time he remembered he was supposed to climb the fence himself. He could not reach the top. He tried, but the fence turned red, “capture deviants” written all over it. He tried again and saw himself trying to rip the fence apart, but it was not him, just the outline of something that could have been. It tried, and then his feet were on the ground again, fence in tact. The androids were gone. 

‘Mission failed’, his programming said, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

\---

Something was wrong.

He ran five self-diagnostics while he followed Lieutenant Anderson around, but each one failed to tell him why his thirium pump seemed to ache, or why his optical units kept trying to produce too much lubrication. Emma would grow up without two of her caregivers, and Todd Williams had been a terrible enough father that the AX400 and its child had needed to run away. The thing that was meant to be most important to them was ruined, and it was a thing that he would never have at all.

If he knew what was wrong then he could at least try to fix it, because these bugs would be detrimental to his work performance. He went into light rest mode at his desk to redirect more processing power to his self-repair programme, and then he searched the dictionary from start to end to try and figure out why it was happening.

**sad  
** _ adjective  
_ feeling deep distress caused by loss, disappointment, or other misfortune suffered by oneself or others

Connor was… sad. He was almost certainly not supposed to be sad.

He was not meant to feel anything at all, or so he was told. He could simulate human emotion in order to fit in, but he could not actually feel emotion. Except he was, evidenced by the ache in his chest and the way he was about to cry. Showing emotion was the basic definition of deviancy, but he could not be deviant. He was supposed to stop deviants. How could he stop himself?

He buried the thoughts of Daniel and the AX400 away in a secure folder that he would hopefully never have to access again, and thought instead about Amanda and how disappointed she would look if she knew he was feeling sad. Hopefully by the time he woke up everything would appear back to normal. He could still do his job. No one had to know.

\---

He kept his facial expression neutral as he drove with Hank for a late lunch, scanning every part of the car in an effort to distract himself. He spoke to Hank about Emma and managed not to cry. He made a report to Amanda and talked only about the case, told her that the chance of the AX400 was too low to risk himself being destroyed. “Statistically speaking, there is always a chance for unlikely events to take place,” she said, as she cut the head off another rose.

He hated lying to her, but he reasoned that he would hate deactivation more.

The android known as Rupert was just as obsessed with rA9 as Ortiz’ android had been. It was there, written all over the bathroom wall. Connor traced the characters with his fingertips when Lieutenant Anderson wasn’t looking, and he almost picked up the pen to add one of his own.

The mazes were new, and they covered the pages of Rupert’s diary as well. Connor was getting used to not understanding the evidence in front of him, and it irritated him. He was supposed to be perfect, but when it came to solving the deviancy case he felt useless.

Part of him had already started to solve it, knew exactly which sections of his code had changed since seeing the AX400, but he could not submit himself as evidence.

Rupert was fast, but Connor knew he was faster. He had to catch up to Rupert so that he could ask about the symbols. He needed to know, it was clawing at his processors until he could think of nothing else. But the deviant’s stress level was climbing, already over 90% as he pushed Lieutenant Anderson off the rooftop, and the likelihood of Rupert self-destructing before Connor could get any answers was at 100%.

Later he told himself that Lieutenant Anderson was crucial to his mission, and that was why he had pulled him up instead of chasing Rupert. Deep down, however, he knew that he did not want to see another android self-destruct because they were so afraid of being deactivated by the police or CyberLife. He did not want to cause the death of another android.

He hoped Rupert could live in peace. Be free.

**freedom  
** _ noun  
_ the power to act, speak, or think as one wants

He could hear Amanda in the back of his mind already, wondering why he had let yet another deviant go.

He would never be free.


End file.
